Why is Indian IT Obsessing Over AI Agents?

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Sector 6 The Daily Newsletter of AIM ________________________________________________________ December 17, 2024 ∙ 3 min read ∙ Visit AIM Hey there! Your AI Human, Amit Raja Naik, is back with today’s scoop on how Indian IT, especially the mid-sized players, are making quiet but impactful strides in agentic AI. The agentic AI wave is here, and mid-sized Indian IT firms are quietly stepping up. Rather than building in-house, they’re taking the acquisition route to stay ahead. LTIMindtree recently committed $6 million to Voicing.AI, a US-based startup specialising in AI voice agents with human-like conversational capabilities in 20+ languages. It has also teamed up with GitHub to train its workforce using its Copilot tool. Mphasis, too, has embraced AI. In July, it launched NeoCrux to streamline developer workflows. With its $132.5 million acquisition of Silverline, a Salesforce partner, Mphasis aims to enhance customer experiences using AI-powered automation. Persistent Systems, on the other hand, tackled AI’s privacy challenges by acquiring Pune-based Arrka for INR 14.4 crore, strengthening its governance-driven approach to AI solutions. While bigger players like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro are doubling down on custom AI solutions (TCS launched AI.Cloud and Infosys unveiled its Topaz suite), mid-sized firms are positioning themselves differently. LTIMindtree COO Nachiket Deshpande explains the reason behind this: building generative AI is too expensive and evolves too quickly to make sense as an in-house investment. Instead, collaborating with startups gives them access to cutting-edge solutions while letting entrepreneurs continue innovating. The shift toward agentic AI is driven by productivity gains. These systems go beyond automating tasks; they focus on entire roles, boosting efficiency across workflows. As Deshpande puts it, “Differentiation will lie in how we adopt AI, not in building another shiny toy.” Smaller IT players like Happiest Minds, Hexaware, Coforge, and Sonata made acquisitions earlier this year to build AI capabilities. Now, the spotlight is on agentic AI, and Indian IT is ready to ride the wave. Enjoy the full story here. RIP, Moxie the Robot Moxie, the cheerful blue robot that gave anxious and lonely children a friend to talk to, is shutting down. For kids who found comfort in its kind voice and understanding presence, Moxie was more than a machine—it was a lifeline.  Parents now face the heartbreaking task of explaining why their child’s beloved companion will no longer work. Videos of children saying tearful goodbyes to Moxie have surfaced, a quiet reminder of how even the most hopeful innovations can fade away.  See below some kid-friendly robots that faced a fate similar to Moxie’s. Check out the full story here.  Microsoft’s Phi-nominal Leap Microsoft’s Phi-4 model is proving that bigger isn’t always better. At just 14 billion parameters, Phi-4 outperforms models many times its size thanks to high-quality synthetic data that prioritises reasoning and problem-solving.  With support for 10 Indian languages and plans to run on local devices, Phi-4 could make advanced AI accessible in cost-sensitive regions like India. As former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever warns of dwindling training data, Microsoft’s approach highlights a shift: quality beats quantity, and scaling models endlessly may no longer be the answer.  The age of smarter, smaller AI has begun. Read on. Anthropic’s MCP Connects It All Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) is changing the game for AI, offering a standard way to connect models like Claude with external tools, apps, and data sources. From editing videos to generating gift ideas, MCP’s open-source approach unlocks creative possibilities at scale. As Alex Albert, head of Claude relations at Anthropic, says, “Agents improving agents, it only moves faster from here on out.”  Yet security concerns and context limitations remain, raising questions about how far this new protocol can go. Could MCP be the key to seamlessly integrating AI into our daily workflows? Read the full story here. Your daily dose of AI insights Eager to navigate the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence and analytics? The key isn't just knowing what's new—it's immersing yourself in the community that's shaping tomorrow. ··· Enhance your expertise every day with the Sector 6 newsletter from AIM Media House. Explore More with AIM: Conference Calendar: Discover our upcoming events and conferences here. AIM Research: Stay ahead with the latest industry research at AIM Research. 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